After threading the valley path for a mile Susannah was ascending the bluff to get to the level of the upper farms, when, much to her surprise, she came, as once before upon the hill Cumorah, upon Joseph Smith. He was lying under a group of giant walnut-trees, whose boles were sheltered from the road by a natural hedge of red dogwood and brambles. He had apparently been occupied at his devotions, but she only saw him arising hastily. This time there was no peep-stone; it had long since been discarded. The prophet had a Bible in his hand, and it was evident that he had been weeping. It was in those lands the habit of religious men of all sects to make oratories of the woods. Susannah's only desire was to pass and leave him undisturbed, but he spoke.

He began severely, "Sister Susannah Halsey, it is not meet that a woman should stray so far from home and without companions."

For a moment Susannah stood abashed. Unaccustomed to censure, she supposed that she must have done wrong. "I have walked this way before," she began meekly, "but if—" She stopped here, her own judgment in the matter beginning to assert itself.

The prophet had forgotten his reproof. At all times his conversation was apt to reveal that sudden changes of mental phase took place within him apparently without conscious volition. He now exclaimed with more modest mien, "It is, no doubt, by the will of the Lord that you are come, for I stood in sore need of comfort, for the revelation of the truth is a trial hard to endure, and at times very bitter."

"Is it?" asked Susannah intently. It was impossible but that her long curiosity should find some vent, and yet she shrank inwardly from her own prying.

The prophet leaned against a huge bole. The ground at his feet was covered with yellow walnut leaves and the olive-coloured nuts. The sunlight fell upon him in patches of yellow light. He opened the Bible, turning over the leaves of the Old Testament as if making a rapid survey of its history in his mind.

"Sister Halsey," he began, "when the favour of the Lord rested chiefly upon the Jewish nation, at the times of the patriarchs and David, and when Solomon, arrayed in all his glory and in the greatness of his wisdom, reigned from Dan to Beersheba, mustn't those have been the times when the people walked most closely with the Lord?"

"I suppose so, Mr. Smith."

"It is not enough to suppose, Sister Halsey, for it is clearly written that when the Jews went contrary to the will of the Lord they were given over into the hands of their enemies."

Susannah endeavoured to give a more unqualified assent.

"Sister Halsey, there has come to my soul in reading this book in these last days a word, and I know not if it be the word of the Lord or no."

She saw with astonishment that his whole frame was trembling now. She began to realise that he was truly in trouble, whether because of the greatness of the revelation or because of private distress she could not tell. She became more pitiful.

"I hope you are well, Mr. Smith, and that Emma is well. There is nothing to really distress you, is there?"

In hearing the increased gentleness of her tone he seemed to find a more easy expression for his pent-up feeling. "It's come upon me in a very cutting way, truly as the prophets said like a two-edged sword, and at the time too when I was inquiring of the Lord concerning—" He stopped here, and she felt that his manner grew more confidential, but he did not look at her, his eyes sought the ground—"concerning a matter which has given me no little heart searching." He stopped again, she listening with a good deal of interest.

"It's come to me to observe that among the chosen people—there ain't no gainsayin' it, Sister Halsey, though I trust you to be discreet and not mention the matter, but in the days when the divine favour rested on Israel each man had more than one wife; and the Lord Himself says He give them to Solomon, the only objection being to heathen partners."

"Do you mean, Mr. Smith, that I'm not to mention what everybody knows already, that in the Old Testament times polygamy was practised?"

The now entire lack of sympathy in her tone affected him as an intentional act of rudeness would affect an ordinary man. The tissue of his mind, which had relaxed into confidence, grew visibly firmer. He assumed the teaching tone.

"No, Mrs. Halsey, the only thing that I asked you not to mention was that I had any light of revelation on a point on which most of our minds is already made up."

"Mr. Smith, you can't possibly be in the slightest doubt but that it would be very wicked for any man now to have more than one wife."

"I've heard a great many of the ministers who in times past, in the time of our bondage we heard and believed, say as it would be very wicked for any one nowadays to take God at His word and expect Him to do a miracle or heal the sick; but I've come to the conclusion, Mrs. Halsey, that it isn't a question of what we in our ignorance and prejudice might think wicked, but it's a question of what's taught in this book, looked at without the eye of prejudice and tradition. What we call civilisation is too often devilisation—devilisation, Mrs. Halsey."

He tapped the book. He was becoming oratorical. "The idea of one wife came in with the Romans. 'Twas no institution of Jehovah, Mrs. Halsey."

Susannah, more accustomed to his oratorical vein than to private conference, became now more frank and at ease.

"You said you didn't know that the idea was from the Lord, Mr. Smith, and I don't think it is. I don't think you'll entertain it very long, and I don't think, if you did, many of the Saints would stay in your church."

She bade him good-day, and went on up the slope. When she was walking along the brink of the bluff in the open beyond the nut-trees she heard him call. He came after her with hastened gait, Bible still in hand. She was surprised to find that what he had to say was very simple, but not the less dignified for that.

"I sometimes think, Sister Halsey, that you look down on us all as if we weren't good enough for you, although you're too kindly to let it be seen. According to the ways of the world, of course, it's so. If I'm as rough and uneducated as most of our folks, at least I can think in my mind what it would be not to be rough, and I can think sometimes how it all seems to you."

His words appealed directly to strong private feeling which had no outlet. While she stood seeking a reply the natural power that he had of working upon the feelings of others, vulgarly called magnetism, so far worked in connection with his words that tears came to her eyes.

"I don't often think about my old life," she said with brief pathos.

Smith was looking at the ground, as a huge, shy boy might stand when anxious to express sympathy of which he was somewhat ashamed. "I know it must be a sort of abiding trial to you." After a moment he added, "I wouldn't like to make it worse by having you think that I was goin' to preach any strange doctrine. I'd sometimes give a good deal if the Lord would raise me up a friend that I could speak to concerning the lights that come to me that I know that it wouldn't do to speak of in the public congregations, because of their upsetting nature, and likewise because I doubt concerning their meaning. And of this matter there was no thought in my mind to speak in public, for it is for the future to declare whether it be of the darkness or of the light; but to you I spoke, almost unwittingly, and perhaps in disobedience to the dictates of wisdom."

He looked at her wistfully.

Susannah leaned her arm upon the topmost log of the snake fence and looked down the slope. His insight into her own trials caused her to sympathise with him in spite of his absurdity. She made an honest effort to assist him to self-analysis. She said, "A great many things come into our minds at times, Mr. Smith, that seem important, but, as you say, if we do not speak about them, afterwards we see that they are silly. Of course with you, if you think some of your thoughts are revelations, it must make you often fancy that the others may be very important too, but it does not follow that they are, and, as you say, time will weed them out if you are trying to do right." She wondered if he would resent her ifs. She stood looking down the bank in the short silence that followed, feeling somewhat timorous. The steep ground was covered with the feathery sprays of asters, seen through a velvety host of gray teasles which grew to greater height. Through the teasles the white and purple flowers showed as colours reflected in rippled water—rich, soft, vague in outline. At one side, by an old stump, there was a splendid feather, yellow and green, of fading golden rod; yellow butterflies, that looked as if they had dyed their wings in the light reflected from this flower, repeated its gold in glint and gleam over all the gray hillside, shot with the white and the blue. At the foot of the bank lay the flat valley, and from this vantage ground the river could be seen. The soft musical chat of its waters ascended to her ears, and among the huge bronze-leafed nut-trees, whose shelter she had just left, the woodpeckers were tapping and whistling to one another.

At length Smith sighed deeply, but without affectation. "Yes, I reckon that's a good deal how it is. It ain't easy, Mrs. Halsey—I hope in your thoughts when judgin' of me you'll always remember that it ain't easy to be a prophet."

When he had gone, Susannah found herself laughing, but for Halsey's sake the laughter was akin to tears.



CHAPTER III.

Ohio was being quickly settled. Within a few miles of Kirtland, Cleveland and Paynesville were rising on the lake shore, and to the south there were numerous villages; but the society of the Saints at Kirtland was especially prosperous, and so sudden had been the increase of its numbers and its wealth that the wonder of the neighbouring settlers gave birth to envy, and envy intensified their religious hatred. Twice before Smith had left Fayette he had been arrested and brought before a magistrate, accused of committing crimes of which the courts were unable to convict him. Now the same spirit gave rise to the same accusations against his followers. About this time webs of cloth were taken from a woollen mill near Paynesville, and several horses were also stolen. The Mormons, whether guilty or not, were accused by common consent of the orthodox and irreligious part of the community. Hatred of the adherents of the new sect began to rise in all the neighbouring country, as a ripple rises on the sea when the wind begins to blow; the growing wave broke here and there in little ebullitions of wrath, and still gained strength until it bid fair to surge high.

About Christmas time there were a number of cases of illness in Kirtland. Joseph Smith healed one woman, who appeared to be dying, by merely taking her by the hand, after praying, and commanding her to get up. After that he went about with great confidence to others who were stricken, and in many cases health seemed to return with remarkable celerity. It is hard to understand why the report of this, going abroad with such addition as gossip gives, should have greatly added to the rage of the members of other religious sects. Perhaps they supposed that the prophet arrogated to himself powers that were even more than apostolic. They threatened violence to Kirtland on the prophet's account, so that before the new year he took Emma and the child and established himself with them in an obscure place called Hiram, some twenty miles to the south. Sydney Rigdon, who by this time was, under the prophet, the chief leader of the Saints, went also to Hiram to be beside him. Smith was toiling night and day to produce a new version of the Hebrew Scriptures, believing that he was taught by inspiration to correct errors in them. Rigdon was scribe and reviser. These two being absent from Kirtland, responsibility and work without limit rested again with Angel Halsey.

With unsatisfied affections and thoughts wholly perplexed, Susannah beheld the days of the new year lengthening. Then she fell into the weakness, to which humanity is prone, of hoping eagerly for some external circumstance that should lighten the inner darkness. A bit of stray news one day came to her with the shock of an apparent fulfilment of her vague expectation. Finney was passing through that part of the country preaching. Of all human beings she had ever met, this remarkable evangelist most impressed her as a man who had intimate dealing, awful, yet friendly, with an unseen power. She had no sooner heard that he was within reach than her mind leaped to the determination to hear him preach and speak with him again. She would lay her difficulties before him; she would hear from him more intelligence concerning the home which she had left than a thousand letters could convey.

It was March now. The winter's snow was gone. Finney, as it chanced, was to come as near to Kirtland as the village of Hiram. Susannah spoke to her husband.

"Did you hear that Mr. Finney was going to preach at Hiram?"

She stood turning from the white spread table in the centre of the room. The morning light was shining on the satin surface of the planed maple wood with which walls and ceiling were lined. Halsey was putting on his boots to go out to his day's round of business and pastoral work. He knew just as well as if she had explained it to him that a great deal lay behind what she said. He fell to wondering at once what she could want. Was it to send a message to the old home by the man whose very name must recall all its memories?

"I want to go and hear him preach," Susannah went on.

Halsey was disturbed. "Thou canst not really have such a desire," he said severely.

"Why not? A great deal that he preaches is just the same as what you preach, Angel."

He saw that she was in a turbulent mood, and that grieved him; but as for her request, he could not believe it to be serious.

"Thou art speaking idle words," he said with a sigh, and he rose to go out.

"You have not answered me. Why shouldn't I hear him when you agree that much that he says is true?"

"He is in the camp of those whom Satan has stirred up to do us injury. That which thou callest truth in his mouth is but the form of godliness, for it is clear that if God be with those who fight against us he cannot be with us."

Something in the expression of her face brought him now a more distinct feeling of alarm. His nature was singularly direct. He had scarcely finished his meditative argument ere he sought to clinch its purport, and, stepping near, he laid his hand gently upon her shoulder.

"Dost thou doubt, Susannah, that God is with us?"

The crimson colour mounted from her cheeks and spread over her white brow. It was as if Angel had asked what he never had asked, whether she loved him or not, whether all her thoughts and feelings were loyal. She knew that for him there was no line of separation between life and love, and love and religion. She was careful for him always, as a mother is for a delicate child, as a sick nurse is for a patient. She could not have endured to give him the pain of hearing her denial, even if such denial would have expressed her attitude truly.

"Indeed, Angel, I—I know that you—" she faltered.

The trouble in his face was growing. "Has not God made the signs of his presence clear to us, and even visible before our eyes? If thou shouldst deny the outward signs, is it not by his grace that we live? Susannah, dost thou think that it is in me by nature to bear with the infirmities and murmurings of our people as I bear with them daily—babes as they are, learning, but not yet having learned, to live at peace with one another? Or dost thou think that it is in me to forgive daily the outrageous acts and words of our enemies, trying as they do to injure our innocent brothers, or even our prophet himself? Yet, Susannah" (his voice was stirred with emotion), "I would bear witness to thee that every day, as I pray, the anger is taken out of my heart, and I can deal with these very men in the spirit of love."

Standing erect before him, confused and distressed, she made another effort to soothe, even taking his hand from her shoulder and trying to caress it between her own, but so tense was the question in his mind that his fingers were limp and unresponsive to her touch.

"I know all that you would say, Angel; I know that you are good; I know that our people, although they have many faults, are trying to do right, and I believe that the people in other sects around us are far more wicked, but—Mr. Finney is not like that."

"Dear heart, thou knowest well that there is no goodness but that which comes from above, and although this Mr. Finney may have a show of goodness, as thou or I might have in his place, yet what avail can his preaching be if God be not with him? So what show of goodness he has only aideth the devil; for how can it be possible, when two armies are encamped one against another, that God can fight upon both sides? Is Christ divided?"

A loud knock came to the outer door; Elder Halsey was late in getting to his work; men were waiting for him. He let the sound of the raps die away before he answered them; his searching look was upon her face, hungering for some assurance that his words had met and slain her doubts. Then he was forced to leave her.

It was easy for Susannah to obtain a horse to go to the village of Hiram. When the day of Finney's preaching came, after her husband had gone to his afternoon work, she rode out of Kirtland.

Since she had made up her mind to disobey she had said nothing further to Angel. Why inflict upon him the painful attempt to hinder her which his conscience would demand?

The last snow-wreath had faded, but there was not as yet a bud or blade of perfect green. The valley of the Chagrin lay almost hueless in the cold sunshine. A light wind was blowing over its levels of standing weeds, and whispering in the bare arms of the huge nut-trees upon its bluffs.

When the sun began to sink, Susannah had reached the low rolling ground that surrounds Hiram. The landscape here had a less distinctive character, and there was no vapour in the sky to make the sunset beautiful. She was weary of her horse's rough trot, and still more so of its slow plodding, but she felt excitement. She had conquered those forces, part of her womanhood, which urged compliance with her husband's desire and her own desire to abide by the homely routine whatever it might be. The thing that she had done seemed so large that her imagination told her that the event must justify it.

She had no thought of concealment. She knew only the two families in the village of Hiram. Her plan was to go first to the Rigdons and ask for refreshment, thence to the meeting, and after that to ask for the night's lodging which she knew that Emma Smith would not refuse.

In the village she saw that people were moving about and talking with an air of excitement. When she turned to a quiet corner and asked an elderly man for Mrs. Rigdon's house, he stared at her as if at an apparition.

"Is it Sydney Rigdon's wife that you're wanting?"

Susannah had raised her veil, and he looked at her face with the greatest curiosity. Flushed with exercise, braced by the sharp air, her colour was brilliant and her eyes sparkling. Her plain dress and heavy veil appeared to the man to be a disguise, so surprising to him was the brilliancy of her face and the modulation of her voice.

"Do you not know where the Rigdons live?" she asked.

He was chewing tobacco, and now he spat upon the ground, not rudely, but as performing an habitual action in a moment of abstracted thought. "Oh, I know well enough, but if ye won't mind my saying a word to ye, young lady, I'd advise ye to put up somewhere else. I've got darters of my own—in course I don't know who ye may be or what ye may be doing here." This last was added in an apparent attempt to attain to some suspicion that he felt to be reasonable.

"You think ill of them because you despise their sect," she said gently, "but I am the wife of one of the elders."

"Have ye got hold of some news that ye're carrying to them?" He evinced a sudden interest that appeared to her extraordinary.

"What news?"

"Oh, I don't know. I jest thought 'twas queer, if you'd got hold of anybody's secrets, that you should be asking where they lived, straight out and open in the street like this."

His words suggested to her only the idle fancies of prejudice. Some other people drew near, and, dropping her veil, she was starting in the direction in which he pointed when he spoke again in a more determined voice. "You jest tell me one thing, will you?" He even laid his hand upon her bridle with authority, "Are ye going to stop at Rigdons' all night?"

"No."

"Sartin?"

When he received her reply he let go the bridle, saying in warning tones, "Well, see that ye don't do it, that's all."

The incident left a disagreeable impression on Susannah's, mind, but she did not attach any distinct meaning to it.

Rigdon and his wife were both within. Rigdon locked the door when Susannah had entered. Then with crossed arms, standing where he could watch against intruders from the window, he began to tell her news of import. His mother, who was an old woman, his wife, and some younger members of the family, gathered round.

The light fell sideways upon his thickset form and large hairy face. His manner was the result of struggle between effort for heroic pose and an almost overmastering alarm. His matter was the evil conduct of the surrounding Gentiles toward the Saints. It seemed that in this and neighbouring places, evangelistic meetings had been held in which Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists had joined, and Rigdon averred that the preachers had used threatening and abusive language with regard to the Saints. A series of such meetings had begun in Hiram, small as it was; and Joseph Smith, like a war-horse scenting the battle, had set aside his arduous task of correcting the Old Testament and gone forth to preach in the open air. At first he had been greeted only with derision or pelted with mud, but in the last few days he had made and baptized converts, and now the fury of the other sects was at white heat.

Susannah's mind swiftly sifted out the improbabilities from Rigdon's wrathful tale.

"But the people that gather to such meetings as Mr. Finney holds are for the most part awaked, for the time at least, to a higher Christian life. It cannot be they who have used the vile language that you repeat."

She almost felt the disagreeable heat of Rigdon's breath as he threw out in answer stories of coarse and brutal insult which had been heaped upon himself and Smith. The large animal nature of this man always annoyed her. There was much of breath in his words, much of physical sensation always clinging to his thoughts. At present, however, she was not inclined to judge him too hardly; although visibly unstrung, unwise in his sweeping condemnation, coarse in his anger, and somewhat grandiloquent in his pose, there was still much of real heroism in his mental attitude. Braced by the fiercest party spirit, he stood staunch in his loyalty to Smith and the cause, with no thought of yielding an inch of ground to the oppressors.

"I do not believe," repeated Susannah sturdily, "that it is the more religious of the Gentiles who have said and done these things. I have come here to-night to hear and to speak with Mr. Finney, whom I know to be a very godly and patient man."

"Why has he come here?" demanded Rigdon. "He who by his preaching can gather thousands in populous places, why should he ride across this thinly settled parcel of land, preaching to mere handfuls, if it is not to denounce us? And he has not the courage to go nearer to the place where the Saints are gathered in numbers. He will teach his hearers first to ravage the few sheep that are scattered in the wilderness, that by that they may gain courage even to attack the fold."

Susannah drew upon herself their anger, and so strong was Rigdon's physical nature that even his transient anger seemed to embody itself in some sensible influence that went out from him and preyed upon her nervous force.

The night had fallen. A bell, the rare possession of the largest meeting-house, had already begun to ring for Finney's preaching. Susannah went out on foot. The Rigdons, as also the Smiths, were living some way from the village. She had now a mile of dark road to traverse.

Closely veiled, Susannah stepped onward eagerly. She felt like a child going home. The scene which she had left showed up vividly the elements of Mormon life that were most repulsive to her, the broad assumptions of ignorance, the fierce beliefs born of isolation, and the growth by indulgence of such animal characteristics as were not kept under by a literal morality or enforced by privations. She was going to see a man who could speak with the voice of the sober past, whose tones would bring back to her the intellectual delicacies of Ephraim's conversation, the broad, pure vision of life which he beheld, and the dignified religion of his people.

The meeting-house was of moderate size. It was already filled when Susannah entered, but she was able to press down one of the passage-ways between the pews and seat herself near the front, where temporary benches were being rapidly set up.

Many of the congregation had doubtless come as far as she. Men and women of all ages, and even children, were there. Some, who it seemed had followed Finney from his last place of preaching, were talking excitedly concerning the work of God which he had wrought there. On every face solemnity was written, and stories were being told of one and another who in his recent meetings had "fallen under the power of God."

When Finney ascended the pulpit Susannah forgot all else. The chapel was not well lighted, but the pulpit lamps shone upon him. He had a smooth, strong face; his complexion was healthy and weather-beaten; his dark eyes flashed brightly under bushy brows. His manner was calm; his style, even in prayer, was that of keen, terse argument; he spoke and behaved like a man who, having spent the emotional side of his nature in some private gust of passionate prayer, had come forth nerved to cool and determined action.

With her whole soul Susannah hung upon his every word, unreasonably expecting to find some new and unforeseen solution to the problems of her life. He had pointed out a straight path to multitudes; she hoped that he could now show it to her.

The power of Finney's preaching lay in its close logical reasoning, by which, accepting certain premises, he built up the conclusion that if a man would escape eternal punishment he must forsake his sin and accept salvation by faith in the doctrine of the substitution. He began always by speaking to the indifferent and the unconvinced; he led them step by step, until it appeared that there was but one step between them and destruction, and that faith must make one quick, long leap to gain the safety of the higher plane, whose joys he depicted in glowing terms.

For the most part there was intense silence in the congregation, although sometimes an audible whisper of prayer or a groan of suppressed emotion was heard. The infection of mental excitement was strong.

Susannah was experiencing disappointment. Accustomed as she was to excitement in the meetings of the Saints, her mind easily resisted the infectious influence. Finney's teaching had not differed in any respect from the doctrine which she heard from her husband daily, a doctrine which she knew by experience did not save men from delusion and rancour. She still listened eagerly to hear of some provision made in the scheme of salvation against injustice and folly. Surely Finney would say something more.

As it happened he did say something more. When for more than an hour he had explained the great plan of salvation he touched upon the responsibility that the hearing of such conclusive reasoning imposed. The sower had sown broadcast; it remained for him to speak with awful impressiveness of those forces which would be arrayed against the convicted soul. Under this head he referred at once and with deep emotion to the devil, who, in the guise of false teachers lying in wait, caught up the seed.

There could be no doubt that the Mormon leaders were in his mind, as they were in the mind of his congregation. It became swiftly evident to Susannah that Finney was stirred by what he believed to be righteous indignation, and that he was as content to be ignorant concerning the doctrines and morals of the people against whom he spoke as were the rudest members of the outside rabble who now pressed with excitement to the open doors and windows.

The righteous Finney had no thought of unrestrained violence. He spoke out of that deep well of hatred for evil that is, and ought to be, in every good man's heart, but he had not humbled himself to gain any real insight into the mingling of good and evil.

"They are liars, and they know that they are liars," said Finney, striking the pulpit cushion. "The hypocrisy of their religion is proved by the lawless habits of their daily lives. Having sold themselves to the great enemy of souls, they lie in wait for you and for your children, seeking to beguile the most tender and innocent, that they may rejoice in their destruction."

He used only such phrases as the thought of the time warranted with regard to those who had been proved to be workers of iniquity, but to Susannah it was clear, in one brief moment, what effect his words would have when heard by, or reported to, more brutal men. She knew now that Rigdon's words were true. The so-called Christian ministers, even the noblest of them, stirred up the low spirit of party persecution.

She rose suddenly, sweeping back her veil from her face. "I will go out." She said the words in a clear voice.

A way was made to a back door by the side of the pulpit. Every one looked at her. Finney, going on with his preaching, recognised her as she began to push forward, and he faltered, as if seeing the face of one who had arisen from the dead. The excited audience felt the tremor that passed over its leader; it was the first signal for such obvious nervous affections as frequently befell people under his preaching; before Susannah had reached the door a stalwart man fell as if dead in her path.

There was a groan and a whisper of awe all round. This was the "falling" which was taken by many as an indubitable sign of the divine power. Susannah had seen it often under Smith's preaching. She waited with indifference until he was lifted up.

Then the sea of faces around her, the powerful voice of the preacher resounding above, passed away like a dream, and were exchanged for a small room and a dim light, where two or three people were gathered round the form of the insensible man. She escaped unnoticed through a private door into the fields, where the March wind eddied in the black night.



CHAPTER IV.

The house in which the Smiths lived was small. Susannah crossed a field-path, led by a light in their window. In the living room a truckle bed had already been made up. By the fire Joseph and Emma were both occupied with two sick children. These children, twins of about a year, had been taken out of pity at their mother's death, and Susannah was told as she entered that they had been attacked by measles.

Susannah found that the fact that she had been to the meeting had not irritated the Smiths, although Mrs. Rigdon had called to make the most of the story. Emma, absorbed in manifold cares for the children, was only solicitous on Susannah's account lest a night's rest in that house should be impossible. Smith, pacing with a child in his arms, seemed to be head and shoulders above the level whose surface could be ruffled by life's minor affairs. With the eye of his inner mind he was gazing either at some lofty scheme of his own imagining, or at heaven or at vacancy. All of him that was looking at the smaller beings about him was composed and kind.

One of the twins, less ill than the other, had fallen asleep in Emma's arms. The other was wailing pitifully upon the prophet's breast.

"Do you and Mrs. Halsey go in and lie down with that young un, Emmar, and rest now for a bit while ye can."

"I can't leave ye, Joseph, with the child setting out to cry all night like that."

But he had his way. Long after they had lain down in the inner room Susannah heard him rocking the wailing babe, or trying to feed it, or pacing the floor. Emma, worn out, slept beside her. Upstairs the owners of the house, an old couple named Johnson, and Emma's own child, were at rest.

Susannah lay rigidly still in the small portion of the bed which fell to her share. Her mind was up, wandering through waste places, seeking rest in vain. The wail of the child in the next room at last had ceased. The prophet had lain down with it on the truckle bed. Long after midnight Susannah began to hear a low sound as of creeping footsteps in the field. Some people were passing very near, surely they would go past in a moment? She heard them brushing against the outer wall, and gleams of a light carried fell upon the window.

In a minute more the outer door of the house was broken open. Emma woke with a cry; instinct, even in sleep, made her spring toward the door that separated her from her husband.

The two women stood in the inner doorway, but the coarse arm of a masked man was already stretched across it, an impassable barrier. The prophet lay on the child's bed, so heavy with sleep tardily sought that he did not awake until four men had laid hold of him. All the light upon the scene came from a smoking torch which one of the housebreakers held. Some twenty men might have been there inside the room and out. The women could barely see that Smith was borne out in the midst of the band. He struggled fiercely when aroused, but was overpowered by numbers.

The owners of the house came down from above, huddling together and holding Emma, who would have thrown herself in the midst of the mob.

Susannah had not undressed. She threw her cloak over her head and ran out, determined to go to the village and demand help in the name of law and a common humanity. She was in a mood to be reckless in aiding the cause she had espoused.

By the glow of the torch which the felons held she saw the group close about the one struggling man as they carried him away. She fled in a different direction.

She had gone perhaps sixty rods in the darkness out of sight of Smith and his tormentors when she was stopped by three men and her name and purpose demanded. When she declared it in breathless voice they laughed aloud. In the darkness she was deprived of that weapon, her beauty, by which she habitually, although unconsciously, held men in awe.

"Now, see here, sister, you jest sit quietly on the fence here, and see which of them's going to get the best of it. Your man's a prophet, you know; let him call out his miracles now, and give us a good show of them for once. He's jest got a few ordinary men to deal with; if he and his miracles can't git the best of them he ain't no prophet. Here's a flattish log now on top. Git up and sit on the fence, sister."

While she struggled in custody another group of dark figures came suddenly at a swinging trot round the dark outline of one of the nearer houses. They brought with them the same kind of lurid torch and a smoking kettle or cauldron carried between two. The foremost among them were also carrying the body of a man, whether dead or alive she could not see. When he was thrown upon the ground he moved and spoke. It was Rigdon's voice. She perceived that he was helpless with terror. The prophet had certainly struggled more lustily.

"Now you jest keep still, sister," said the loudest of her three companions. "Kill him? not if ye don't make a mess of it by interferin'. It's only boilin' tar they've got in the pot."

Susannah covered her face with her hands; then, too frightened to abstract her mind, she gazed again, as if her watchfulness might hinder some outrage. The group was not near enough, the light was too uncertain, for her to see clearly. The shadows of the men were cast about upon field and wall as if horrible goblins surrounded and overshadowed the more material goblins who were at work. They were taking Rigdon's clothes from him. Their language did not come to her clearly, but it was of the vilest sort, and she heard enough to make her heart shiver and sicken. They held over him the constant threat that if he resisted they would kill him outright. If Smith, too, were exposed to such treatment she did not believe that he would submit, and perhaps he was now being done to death not far off.

When they began to beat Rigdon with rods and his screams rang out, Susannah could endure no longer. She broke madly away from her keepers, running back along the road towards Emma's house. They essayed to follow; then with a laugh and a shrug let her go, calling to her to run quick and see if the prophet had fetched down angels to protect him.

Susannah ran a long way, then, breathless and exhausted, found that she had missed a turning and gone much too far. Afraid lest she should lose herself by mistaking even the main direction in which she wanted to go, and that while out of reach of any respectable house she might again be assailed by members of the mob, she came back, walking with more caution. She had no hope now of being the means of bringing help. She had come farther from the village instead of nearing it, and what few neighbours there were, having failed to interfere, were evidently inimical.

When she found the right turning she again heard the shouts of some assaulting party, and, creeping within the shadow of trees, she waited.

At length they passed her, straggling along the road, shouting and singing, carrying with them some garments which, in rough horse-play, they were tearing into fragments. When the last had turned his back to where she stood she crept out, running again like a hunted thing, fearing what she might find as the result of their work. To increase her distress the thought came that it was more than possible that like work had been going on at Kirtland that night. Tears of unutterable indignation and pitiful love came to her eyes at the thought that Angel, too, might be suffering this shameful treatment. Across some acres of open ground she saw the Smiths' house, doors and windows lit by candles. Thither she was hastening when, in the black space of the nearer field, she almost fell upon a whitish form, grotesque and horrible, which was rising from the ground.

"Who is it?" asked Joseph Smith.

He stood up now, but not steadily; his voice was weak, as if he had been stunned, and his utterance indistinct because his mouth had apparently received some injury. She thought of nothing now but that he was Angel's master, and that Angel might be in like plight.

"What have they done? What is the matter?" she whispered tenderly, tears in her voice.

"Is it you?" he asked curiously. He said nothing for a minute and then, "They've covered me with the tar and emptied a feather-bed on me. If ye'd have the goodness to tell Brother Johnson to come out to me, Mrs. Halsey—"

"They have hurt you other ways," she said tremulously, "you are bruised."

"A man don't like to own up to having been flogged, ye see; but Peter and Paul and all of them had to stand it in their time, so I don't know why a fellow like me need be shamefaced over it. But if you'd be good enough, Mrs. Halsey, to go and tell Emmar that I ain't much hurt, and send Brother Johnson out with some clothes or a blanket—"

He stopped without adding that he would feel obliged. As she went she heard him say with another sort of unsteadiness in his tone, "It's real kind of you to care for me that much."

In her excitement she did not know that she was weeping bitterly until she found herself surrounded by other shuddering and weeping women in Emma's room; for other of the converts in Hiram, hearing of the violence abroad, had crept to this house for mutual safety and aid.

It is the low, small details of physical discomfort that make the bitterest part of the bread of sorrow. Now and afterwards, through all the persecutions in which she shared, Susannah often felt this. If she could have stood off and looked at the main issues of the battle she might have felt, even on the mere earthly plane, exaltation. Yet one truth her experience confirmed—that no human being who in his time and way has been hunted as the offscouring of the world—no, not the noblest—has ever had his martyrdom presented in a form that seemed to him majestic. It is only those who bear persecution, not in its reality but in imagination, who can conceive of it thus.

All night the women were crowded together in the small inner room with the two sick babes, while Emma and two of the brethren performed the painful operation of taking the tar from Smith's lacerated skin. The prophet bore himself well. Now and then, through the thin partition the watchers heard an involuntary groan, but he was firm in his determination to be clean of the pitch, and to preach as he had appointed the next day.

At dawn Susannah went to get her horse at Rigdon's house. The animal was safe. When she had saddled it she inquired after the welfare of those within the house. Rigdon was raving in delirium. He had, it seemed, been dragged for some distance by his heels, his head trailing over stony ground. They had not been able to remove the tar and feathers. He lay upon a small bed in horrible condition. His wife, with swollen eyes and pallid face, was sitting helpless upon the foot of the bed, worn out with vain efforts to soothe him. His mother, a thin and dark old woman, vibrating with anathemas against his tormentors, led Susannah in and out of the room silently, as though to say, "This is the work of those whose virtue you extolled."

The village, the low rolling hills about it, lay still in the glimmer of dawn. The men of violence were sleeping as soundly, it seemed, as innocence may sleep. The famous preacher, and all those souls that he had thrilled through and through for good and evil, were now wrapped in silence. Susannah rode fast, guiding her horse on the grass by the roadside lest the sound of his hoofs should arouse some vicious mind to renewed wrath. Her imagination, possessed by the scenes of the past night, presented to her lively fear for Halsey's safety. She gave her horse no peace; she thought nothing of her own fatigue until she had reached the Chagrin valley, and the walls of the Mormon temple which was being reared upon Kirtland Bluff were seen glistening in the sunlight, with the familiar outline of the wooden town surrounded by gray wreaths of the leafless nut woods. It was high day, and the people were gathering for morning service when Susannah rode her jaded horse through the street of the lower village and up the hill of the Bluff.

As she lifted the latch of her own door Angel was about to come out to preach. His face was very white and sad. Susannah's glad relief, fatigue, and excitement found vent in tears.

"You are safe!" she cried. "Oh, my dear, I will never leave you again while danger is near—never, never again!"

In the evening of that day further news came from Hiram. The prophet had preached long and gloriously in the open air. New converts had been made, and he himself, scarified and bruised as he was, had gone down into the icy river and baptized them in sight of all. The mob had shrieked and jeered, but had been withheld by God, as the messenger said, from further violence.

Susannah made no further effort to find new life in the old doctrines. All her sentiments of justice and mercy combined to make her espouse her husband's cause with renewed ardour.



CHAPTER V.

In the summer of that same year, while the wheat in the Manchester fields was still green, and the maize had attained but half its growth, while the ox-eyed daisies still stood a happy crowd in the unmown meadows, and pink and yellow orchids blazed in unfrequented dells, the preacher Finney, after long absence, chanced to be again travelling on the Palmyra road. As was his habit, he sought entertainment at the house of Deacon Croom in New Manchester.

The preacher remembered always that his citizenship was in heaven. From the thought he drew great nourishment of peace and hope, but as far as his earthly affairs were concerned the outlook was at present grievous.

He was returning from a long and dreary religious convention held in an eastern town, where one, Mr. Lyman Beecher, had stirred up against him the foremost divines of New York and Boston. They had asserted that Finney's doctrine, that the Spirit of God could suddenly turn men from following evil to pursuing good, was false and pernicious; that his method stirred up the people to unholy excitements which were productive of great evil. Now the accusations of these divines (who, thinking that a man's change of mind must needs be so slow a thing, some of them, gray-haired, had not as yet produced this change in a single sinner) were in many points wholly false, in many exaggerated, and where the article of truth remained in the accusation there was much to be said in defence of work that had resulted, if in some evil, certainly in much palpable good. To such groups of priests and soldiers and publicans as came forth to John's baptism of repentance, the godly Finney, travelling now east and now west, had appealed, and that the wide land was the better for the crying of his voice no candid person who knew the result of his labours could deny. He that had two coats had imparted to him that had none; the extortioner had returned his unfair gains, and some rough men had become gentle. But in the assembly from which Finney had just come the larger numbers and the greater power of rhetoric had been on that side which appeared to show least faith in God and least zeal for men, and Finney had come out from the combat bruised in spirit.

Some natural comfort the weary man experienced from the sweet charm of the summer afternoon, from anticipation of the welcome and sympathy which would soon be his. He heard, but could not see, the Canandaigua water as it ran under its canopy of willows, over whose foliage the light wind passed in silver waves. On the height of the hill above the mill-dam he turned his horse into the yard of the Croom homestead. The stalwart deacon in overalls, his excitable, slender wife, her cap-strings flying, came forth, the one from the barn, the other from her bake-house.

It was not to either of these worthy souls that Finney intended first to confide the story of his glimpse of Susannah. It said much for the sterling truth of this man's soul that, accustomed as he was to demand from himself and others public confession of those experiences most private to the individual soul, he had not lost delicacy of feeling or reverence for individual privacy in human relationships. He had not been at this house since the month after Susannah's departure, when excitement and wrath still raged concerning her. He judged that in the hearts of the older members the wound had healed, leaving only the healthy scar that such sorrows leave in busy lives. He knew, too, that in Ephraim's heart the blade of this grief had cut deeper.

The supper over, the full moon already gilding the last hour of the summer daylight, Ephraim donned his hat to take the solitary evening stroll to which he had become accustomed. He thought to leave the trio who were in complete accord of sentiment to talk longer over the persecution which Finney endured, but on the little brick path between the flower-beds the evangelist came up with him.

Ephraim was but half pleased. It was in this brief evening hour that he set his thoughts free, like children at playtime. Like other students forced to live in invalidish habits, he had established a rule of thought more strict than men of active callings need. At certain hours he would study his country's social, political needs; at others he would help in his father's farm management; at others he would study some exact science. But when the measured hours of his day were over, and before he lit his student's lamp, for a while he turned his fancies loose, and they ran all too surely to play about Susannah's charms, about the circumstances of her life. This was not his happiest hour. The eternal advantage of love was lost for the time in its present distress. Hateful thoughts were the results of this self-indulgence, yet he hated more anything that came as interruption. During these years the lover in him had not grown what the world calls wise.

For some minutes Finney, controlling the briskness of his ordinary pace, walked by Ephraim's side and contented himself with the gracious scene, passing remarks upon weather and crops. Soon, for the value of time always pressed upon him, his business-like voice took a softened tone, and he began preaching a heart-felt sermon to his one listener.

The subject of the sermon was "the fire God gave for other ends," and he ventured to point out to Ephraim, in his plain, logical way, that it was wrong to waste on a woman that devotion which God intends only himself.

Ephraim smiled; it was a good-tempered, buoyant smile. "Did it ever occur to you, Finney, to reflect that, with your opinions, had you been the Creator, you would never have made the world as it is made? What time would you ever have thought it worth while to spend in developing the iridescence on a beetle's wing, in adjusting man's soul till it responds with storm or calm, gloom or glory, to outer influence, as the surface of the ocean to weather?"

Finney was puzzled, as he always was, by Ephraim's bonhomie and his strange ideas. "But what have you to advance against what I have already said, Ephraim?"

"Advance? I advance nothing. I even withdraw my painted insects and the storms of emotion by which I had perhaps thought that God did his best teaching; I withdraw also my exaltation of that strait gate of use without abuse for the making of which I had almost said Heaven hands us the most dangerous things. I withdraw all that offends you, Finney, in order to thank you for having spoken her name. No one else has spoken it in my hearing since they knew of my last parting with her, and I—I am fool enough half the days to wish the clouds in their thunder-claps would name her."

The voice of the whip-poor-will complained over the tops of the woodland in near and far cadence through the warm moonlit air. Beside this and the throb of insect voices there was no sound. "I came out this evening," said Finney, "to tell you that last March in Ohio I saw her." His voice fell at the pronoun in sympathetic sorrow.

"Yes?"

"When I was about to return from Cincinnati I was advised to go northward to the Erie Canal, in order that I might pass through that part of the State which has been sorely infected by the cancer of that hypocrite's teaching."

There was no need in the district of Manchester for Finney to explain what hypocrite he meant. In his own country Smith was commonly held to be the arch-hypocrite.

"The devil has surely espoused that cause in earnest, for the number of deluded souls in that part of Ohio and in southern Missouri, and scattered as missionaries up and down the country, is, I hear, between three and four thousand."

"And always among those who worship the letter of the Scripture," remarked Ephraim, "for their missionaries give chapter and verse for all they teach."

"I was told that their customs were peculiarly evil. Even among themselves they lie and steal and are violent and licentious; and they teach openly that it is a merit to steal from the Gentiles, as they call those not of themselves; and, furthermore, they aim at nothing less than setting up a government of their own in the west."

"Who told you all this?"

"I am sorry to say that I had it on good authority. Some of the western brethren had it from a poor fellow who had been deluded into entering the Mormon community, and had barely escaped with his life when he desired to withdraw."

"Would you consider a pervert from your own sect the best witness of its tenets? But you say that you saw my cousin?"

Finney told what had led him to the village of Hiram, and said, "When I spoke of the sins of the Mormons, a young woman seated near the front of the congregation rose up. It was your cousin. I saw at once by the pallor of her face that the Lord was having direct dealing with her soul. The 'power' was indeed very great; a strong man fell as dead near her, who before the night was over gave testimony of sound conversion. After he and your cousin had been led out, many others in different parts of the building cried to God for mercy. When the sermon was over I sought for your cousin, but when I told who she was, the people of the place said that no doubt Mormon messengers had come while she was waiting, and forced her to depart. That night there was a disturbance in the place; some of the more hot-headed men had the leaders out, and tarred and feathered them—a dastardly deed! I have been threatened myself with being rid on a rail and tarred when the devil stirred up the people against my preaching, but the Lord mercifully preserved me. 'Tis a shameful practice, but I hear it was done to these men to intimidate them from the more violent crimes which they had conspired to commit. In the morning I was forced to go, as I was advertised to preach at many stations farther on, or I would have denounced the violence from the pulpit. I could not find out anything more concerning your cousin, but the Lord has never allowed me to doubt that the many prayers which we have offered on her behalf were answered that night, for I could see by the expression of her face that she, like those upon the day of Pentecost, was cut to the heart."

At the garden gate, under the boughs of the quince-tree, which had increased its branches since the day in which Susannah had last passed under them, Ephraim now stood in the moonlight, barring the entrance. At length with a sigh he said, "Alas! Finney, I believe that there are few souls under heaven more true and more worthy than your own; but as for the power of God, 'His way is in the sea and his path in the great waters, but his footsteps are not known.'"

Out of his breast Ephraim took a thin leather book, and from out of the book gave Finney a letter much worn with reading.

Finney took the letter reverently, and read it by the light of his bedroom candle. In those days letters were more formally written; this one from Susannah to Ephraim began with wishes concerning her aunt and uncle and the prosperity of the household. The fine flowing writing filled the large sheet.

"I write to you, my dear cousin, rather than to my aunt, to whom I fear my letter would not be acceptable, for although I can say that I regret my wilfulness and the manner of my disobedience, still I can never regret that, having been forced to choose, I threw in my lot with those who can suffer wrong rather than with those who have it in their hearts to inflict wrong, for if there be a God—ah, Ephraim, this is another reason why I address you, for I am in sore doubt concerning the knowledge of God, as to whether any knowledge is possible. My husband, who denies me nothing, has allowed me to send for some of your books whose names I remembered. I thought at first to write to you about them, but I distrust now my own understanding too much to venture. I would like you to know that they have helped me somewhat, for I do not now say to myself in hard, tearless fashion that I know there is no God, to which thought I was driven by the reflection that most of those who seek him most diligently sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

"But the more immediate occasion of this letter is to tell you that a month since Mr. Finney held a meeting not far from us. I went, thinking to gain some help from him, and to hear news of you, but I was greatly disappointed, and made very angry. He preached as my husband and many of our elders preach, and there were among the crowd the same signs of excitement and peculiar manifestations that we have constantly among us. But toward the end of his sermon Mr. Finney spoke of my husband's Church, and he lent the weight of his influence to very evil slanders that are constantly repeated about us by those who have not sought to know the truth. He did us great injury by stirring up the roughest of the people to violence. Mr. Finney will, I suppose, visit you and repeat those lies, which no doubt he believes, but is most culpable in believing, because he has not investigated the scandal against us as he would have investigated scandal against any who are orthodox. I write now to tell you that that which he says is not true. For although there are a few criminals amongst us, as in every community, evil is not taught or condoned."

As Finney read this letter by his lonely candle he was so far stirred by what he deemed the merely human side of the incident as to say to himself, "Poor Ephraim! She has never even known that he loved her." But next day, in speaking to Ephraim, he pointed out that in the worst communities there were always pure-minded women who knew little or nothing of the evil around them, and said he believed that his message would still be the means of bringing home the truth to Susannah's heart.



CHAPTER VI.

In the meantime an interval of comparative peace had come to Kirtland. The Gentiles, because they discovered that the town was a good market for the produce of more fields than the Saints could till, allowed their religious zeal to slumber.

A female relative of Halsey, having lost her friends by death, came from the east to Kirtland upon his invitation.

Susannah went down the hill one summer day to meet the travelling company of new converts which brought Elvira Halsey. That young lady had seen about twenty-five years of life's vicissitudes, and had sharpened her wits thereon. Slight, pretty, and dressed with an effort at fashion that was quite astonishing in the Kirtland settlement, Elvira sprang from the waggon.

"I've come to be a Mormon. How do you begin?" With these words she presented to Susannah a new type of character, fresh, and in some ways delightful.

There was quite a crowd at the stopping place of the waggons. Halsey, with other elders and Smith, came to welcome the newcomer. Elvira stood on tip-toe, peeping about, pressing Susannah's arm with whispers. "Which is Joe Smith, do tell me? Do you go down on your knees to him, and does he pat your head?"

Guided by keen instinct, Elvira did not make remarks in Halsey's hearing which would have shocked him, but perhaps by the same instinct she at once claimed Susannah as a confidante in spite of some feeble remonstrance.

"Are you not wrong to speak so lightly of our religion?" asked Susannah, feeling that she was an elder's wife.

"First let me be sure that you have any religion to speak of." She looked up prettily in Susannah's face. "What a beautiful creature you are!" she cried. "And is it to please my cousin Angel that you wear a snuff-coloured dress and a white cap and a neckerchief like an old lady of seventy?"

As they proceeded together up the white curving road, over the crest of the verdant bluff, Elvira announced her further intentions.

"I am not going to live with you. I am going to board with the Smiths. I want to get to the bottom of this business, and see the apparitions myself."

"There are no apparitions," said Susannah gently.

"Gold books, you know, flying about in the air, and the angel Maroni and hosts of the slain Lamanites."

"You expect too much. Such visions as Mr. Smith had came but at the beginning to attest his mission and give him confidence."

"Tut! I should think he had sufficient of that commodity. It is I who require the confidence, and have I come too late?"

"I would question, if it did not appear unkind, why you have come at all?"

"Bless you, it's relations, not revelations, that I came after."

"I fear that Angel will not be satisfied with that attitude," Susannah sighed. She supposed that Elvira represented all too well the attitude of educated minds in that far-off world whose existence she tried to forget.

"Therefore," said Elvira, "I will board with the Smiths."

Elvira's whim to be received into the prophet's family could not be carried out, but by persistency she succeeded in establishing herself in the household of Hyrum Smith, where she distinguished herself by two peculiarities—a refusal to marry any of the saintly bachelors who were proposed to her, and a perpetual good-natured delight in all that she saw and heard. She resisted baptism, but to Susannah's surprise, remained on perfectly friendly terms with the leaders of the sect.

The next two years passed quietly in Kirtland. Susannah, imbued, as indeed were all Smith's friends, with his belief that the peace was but for a time, cherished her husband as though death were near, and grieved him by no outward nonconformity to pious practices. Many chance comments which she made were straws which might have shown him the way the current of her thought tended underneath her habitual silence, but they showed him nothing. It was mortifying to her to observe that Smith, rarely as he saw her, was always cognisant of her mental attitude, while her husband remained ignorant.

Susannah gave up the girlish habit of fencing with facts that it appeared modest to ignore. She was perfectly aware that she exercised a distinct influence over the prophet, of what sort or degree she could not determine. Little as she desired this influence, she could not withhold a puzzled admiration for Smith's conduct. He rarely spoke to her except in the most meagre and formal way, and all his decrees which tended for her elevation in the eyes of the community or for her personal comfort were so expressed that no personal bias could be detected.

She asked herself if Smith practised this self-restraint for conscience' sake, or from motives of policy, or whether it was that several distinct selves were living together within him, and that what appeared restraint was in reality the usual predominance of a part of him to which she bore little or no relation. There was much else in his character to admire and much to condemn. He had steadily improved himself in education, in mental discipline, and in personal appearance and address. He could hardly now be thought the same man as when he had first preached the new doctrine in Manchester. This bespoke an intense and unresting ambition, and yet the selfishness that is the natural result of such ambition was absent. As far as his arduous work would permit, he gave himself lavishly to wife and child, to all the brethren, rich and poor, when they asked for his ministrations. The motherless babies whom he had helped Emma to nurse through their infancy had gone back to their father's care, but there was never a time when some poor child or destitute woman was not a member of his household. On the other hand, many of the actions of his public life were questionable. He had established a bank in Kirtland, of which he was the president. Even Halsey admitted to Susannah that this was a great mistake, that the bank ought to have been under the control of some one who understood money matters; the prophet did not. He had also set up a cloth mill, and undertaken to farm a large tract of land in the public interest. The prophet showed to much better advantage when instituting new religious ceremonies, of which there were now many and curious, or when giving forth "revelations" which had to do with the principles of economy rather than its practical details. Susannah thought that the voice of the Gentiles all around them, shouting false accusations of greed and dishonesty, would sooner or later find much apparent confirmation if no financier could be found to lay a firm hand upon the prophet's sanguine tendency toward business speculation.



CHAPTER VII.

In the bleak December two elders came from Zion, the holy city in Missouri, bringing the history of dire tribulation.

It was a cold night; the first snow was falling upon the wings of a gale. Susannah was sitting alone quietly working out problems in algebra, in which study Smith had desired that her elder pupils should advance. The storm beat upon the window pane, and set the bright logs of the fireplace now flaming and now smoking, the varnished wooden walls dimly reflecting light and shadow.

Halsey had been out to see the newcomers, who were staying at the prophet's house. It was late when she heard his tread, muffled in the drifted snow. He hardly paused to shake it from his clothes before he came near. She saw that he was in a mood of strong grief and excitement.

"Angel," she spoke pityingly, "you have had a hard, hard day; you have stayed so very late at this evening's conference." She held out her hand to him. "Do not tell me to-night if you can rest before telling." Young as she was, her countenance, as she lifted it toward him, was motherly. She remembered what a mere boy he was, fair and hopeful, when she had first seen him three years before, and now strong lines of purpose and endurance were written upon the face that was thin and pale, the paler, it seemed, because of the transient colour that the storm had given a moment since to the clear skin.

"I would that thou didst not need to hear, but it is not for us to turn our eyes from that which the Lord hath written for our instruction in the suffering of our brethren." Then he added, "The elders from Zion have told us all. There was great joy and prosperity among them, and the more foolish boasted of their wealth to the Gentiles, saying also that the Lord had given the whole land to them for an inheritance."

"That, indeed, was very foolish," said Susannah.

"Nay, but it was small blame to them, for that which they said is true. But among the Gentiles the political demagogues began to be afraid that we should rule the country by the number of our votes. The Gentiles gathered together in the town of Independence, and three hundred of them signed a declaration demanding that every one in Zion should sell all that he possessed and leave the country within a certain time, and that none other of us should settle there."

"But forced sale would mean that no fair value would be given for the property; it would be simple robbery," she cried; "and they call this the land of freedom!"

"They appealed to the Governor of Missouri, but they found that the Lieutenant-Governor, a man called Boggs, was among the fiercest of the persecutors. As for the Governor himself, he advised them to resort to the courts for damages."

"What next?" She was impatient at a pause he made.

He knelt down upon the floor in front of her, laying a calming hand upon her shoulder. "Susannah, there is this one great cause for our deep gratitude to heaven, that this time all our elders with one voice called upon our people to bear with patience, to cry to God to cleanse their hearts from all anger and revenge."

"I suppose that was well," she said, but with hesitation.

By the gentle pressure of his hand he still expressed his sympathy for her pain in listening. "Lawyers were engaged to carry the matter through the courts. But no sooner was it known that the thing was to be publicly tried than the Gentiles rose in arms. For three nights they entered the houses of the Saints, beating the men, burning their barns, and in many cases unroofing the houses. Some of our brethren went to Lexington for a peace warrant, but the judge was frightened at the mob, and, moreover, if he had offended them he would have lost much money, so he told the Saints to arm and defend themselves."

Halsey had paused again. The moral question here involved was to him of deep importance.

"If it was only for self-defence, Angel—" she began.

He shook his head. "Nay, it was a fierce temptation, and our people are not yet sanctified, but God in his great mercy withheld them from sinning against him. For they had no sooner obtained arms than Lilburn Boggs, the Lieutenant-Governor, came and disarmed them."

"And then?"

"Our people were driven from their homes. In the cold storms of November, women and little children and wounded men were forced to flee out upon the open prairie, and up and down the banks of the Missouri River. At last they gathered together on the river-side, and many of them have now crossed it, remaining in the opposite county, and the others have dispersed, poor and homeless, into less unfriendly parts of the State. These elders have come here that the prophet may send back some revelation at their hand, and that we may all gather together what we can spare from our abundance for the relief of our fugitive brethren."

His eyes were shining with triumphant faith, even though the close of his narrative seemed to admit of so little hope.

"And will Mr. Smith still teach them that they must not strike a blow for their rights?" she asked.

This was fast becoming the critical question of the hour.

In February the snow lay deep on the land. Susannah, like all her neighbours, spent some days isolated by the drifts, the men only going abroad. On one of these afternoons the prophet tapped at her door. His visit in Halsey's absence was unprecedented.

Without preface he began to make a statement as to the affairs of the Church in Missouri.

"The greater part of our fugitive brethren have at my desire gathered together upon a large tract of uncleared land that lies just across the river from Zion. It is the desire of the Lord that they should there await until it is his will to open the gates of Zion once more."

"It is your desire that they should gather and wait there."

She spoke with no rude emphasis, but he understood. This man could read her thought before it was expressed. He pushed his thick hair from his forehead with a heavy hand.

"Understand, Mrs. Halsey, that I believe the voice of the Lord has spoken, but it is also my desire."

"Does the voice of the Lord ever speak but in accordance with your desire?"

The answer burst from him with almost hysterical force, "I would to heaven it did not."

"But in such cases are not your desires divided against themselves? and the word of the Lord comes perhaps in accordance with one desire and in contradiction of another?"

He sat for some time looking absently upon the floor.

"The things of the Lord," he said, "are of vast importance, and require time and experience, as well as deep and solemn thought, to find them out. And if we would bring the world to salvation it requires that our minds should rise to the highest, and also search into and contemplate the lowest abyss"—he paused for a moment, and then added in sad undertone—"that is within our own hearts."

Susannah was silent, wondering what was the true secret of his elusive thought.

He went on with an effort. "Accepting your own words, Mrs. Halsey, that it is at my desire that they are there instead of being scattered among friendly settlements where they could obtain support, it remains true that they are naked, hungry, and cold. When I sleep the vision of their sufferings comes before me." He went on again with more vehemence. "It is also by obeying my doctrine that they are cast out of their own lands and from their own hearths. Whether the Lord hath spoken or no, it is by obeying the doctrines that I have taught that they are in wretchedness." He rose, pacing the room, apparently unconscious of what he did.

"I know that this has been weighing upon you, as it has upon my husband."

He shook his head impatiently, striking his breast suddenly with one hand. "There is but one heart," he said, "in which the pains and sorrows of them all are gathered."

She began to see that he had a plan to unfold.

At length he stopped in his pacing, looking toward her. "We must go to their relief," he said. "We must gather an army and conduct our suffering brethren back to their homes in Zion."

"By force of arms?" she asked.

"If need be."

He left time for the significance of these words to be fully comprehended, and then went on speaking as he paced again. "It may be that we will not need to fight, that if we get ourselves in readiness we shall need but to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord; and in plain language to you, who expect no miracle, Mrs. Halsey, I would be understood to say that if a sufficient number of our strong men, armed for defence, join our brethren in Missouri, the Gentiles will be afraid to attack."

At last she asked, not without excited tremor in her voice, "Who? How many? When?"

These were important questions with regard to the organising of an army, but the prophet had in mind a point that must previously be determined.

"Your husband," he began abruptly, "he has still upon him the taint of his Quaker upbringing, for the Lord Christ indeed taught long-suffering, and he sent them out at first, as we also have sent our missionaries, with nothing in their hand save a staff only, but afterwards he said, 'Let him that hath a sword take it,' and they said unto him, 'Lord, here are two swords,' and he said, 'It is enough,' which I take to mean that where one sword is raised there must be another to ward off a blow or to strike in return. But your husband is teaching the people that to bear arms, even in self-defence, is wrong."

Susannah saw that already in Smith's indomitable will the era of armed defence had begun. Her hatred of the persecution caused her sentiments to chime with his. She only said in defence of Halsey's meekness, "My husband would have gone before now to give himself and all that he has to help these poor people if you had not interfered, Mr. Smith."

A change of expression came in a moment over Smith's hulking form, as if a different phase of him came forward to deal with a change of subject. He turned upon her almost sharply, "There is one man in Kirtland who shall not go to Zion till peace is there. If he went, would he not of his own accord rush into the forefront, into the hottest of the battle, not to fight but to receive the sword in his breast and be slain, even as Uriah the Hittite was slain? Wherefore, I say unto you, he shall not go."

Susannah, like all good women, had no keenness of scent for scandals, ancient or modern. She did not remember who Uriah was, and took no offence.

The prophet had tarried in his pacing by the window; with hands clasped behind him he was looking absently out upon the driven snow. Upon his face was an expression which Susannah only sometimes saw, and that in the moments which she felt to be his best. She believed this man to have true moments of humility and high resolve; it was only a question with her how far they permeated his life. In a minute more he turned again and spoke modestly and sadly enough.

"As I have said before, it is not in me to greatly love our brother Halsey's manner of thought, but I perceive his holiness and the Church shall not lack his counsel. I am here to-day to tell you how much it grieves me to set a constraint upon his conscience, yet I am here also to ask you to tell him from me that it is not the will of the Lord that he should continue to preach against the spirit of self-defence."

When he was gone Susannah realised how angry she would have been if she had heard that Smith had rebuked her husband on this subject, yet now that the fiat lay in her own hands to impart with all gentleness, the task, because of her own fierce attitude toward the oppression, was grateful to her.

When the roof had been set on the white walls of the first great Mormon temple upon Kirtland Bluff, a small army, well armed, well provisioned, went out from Kirtland for the deliverance of Zion amid the prayers and huzzahs of the little community. There were many who, like Halsey, bewailed in secret this taking of the sword, but the doctrine of non-resistance was never preached again.



CHAPTER VIII.

After this Susannah's attention was centred upon the coming of her first child.

"'Tain't lucky to have a child when the leaves are falling," said Elvira Halsey, a certain mist of far-off vision clouding her sparkling eyes.

Susannah had been greatly weighed down by depression, not fearing ill-luck, but regretting for the first time unfeignedly that she had ever joined herself to the sect in which her child must now be nurtured. For herself, feeling often that all religions were equally false, it had mattered little; with strange inconsistency she now perceived that she would greatly prefer another faith for her child. Susannah literally found no place for repentance; to confess her grief to Halsey would only have been to crush out all the domestic joy of his life; she was too courageous to do that when she saw no corresponding good to be gained. Yet when the baby at length lay on her lap, grew and smiled, kicked and crowed, Susannah forgot at times, for hours together, the superstitions of the Latter-Day Saints. The motherly solicitude which she had long exercised over Halsey changed into something more like friendship when she saw him hang over her and her child as they played together.

Susannah had given up her school. The winter was severe, and mother and child hibernated together by the sweet-scented pinewood fires till the stronger sun had melted the frost flowers on the panes. Spring had nearly come before Susannah divined that for the child's sake Halsey had been protecting her for months from the fear of a near disaster that was weighing upon his own heart.

This was the year of what was called in the early Mormon Church "the great apostasy." One evening Halsey came in looking so white and ill that Susannah drew back the baby, which she had held out for his evening kiss.

In a few minutes she understood what had occurred. Some four or five leaders in the Church, with their families and friends, had charged Smith with hypocrisy and fraud.

It was not Susannah's own opinion that such a charge could be maintained. Smith appeared to her to be like a child playing among awful forces—clever enough often to control them, to the amazement of himself and others, but never comprehending the force he used; often naughty; on the whole a well-intentioned child. But she could well see that childishness combined with power is a more difficult conception for the common mind than rank hypocrisy.

Angel had been assisting in a solemn excommunication of the apostates. He looked upon them as having been overcome by the devil.

After this Halsey instituted a series of unusual meetings for prayer and revival preaching, which he held after the ordinary evening classes in the School of the Prophets, which was now removed to the upper chambers of the finished temple. Now, as at other times, his preaching was successful. His power was with men rather than with women; they gathered in excited crowds, and their prayer and praise went up in the midnight hour.

Susannah was not in the habit of going to bed till her husband returned. One night, after twelve had struck, while she sat warming the dimpled feet of her restless babe at the rosy fire-light, she was greatly astonished to hear a tapping, low but distinct, on a window that opened to the back of the house. She lifted her head as mother animals prick their ears above their young at the faint sound of any danger.

After an interval the tap was repeated; it was no accidental noise. Susannah laid the child in its cradle and went nearer the window shutters, hesitating.

She knew only too well that this secrecy was the sign of some one's dire distress. She knew the habits of the people; a neighbour's aid was sought freely and with confidence; doors were open at all times to need or social intercourse.

To her intent listening the accents of a low and guarded tone came in reply to her challenge; the voice was Joseph Smith's.

Susannah looked with anguish toward her child's cradle. Had some army of mad persecutors invested Kirtland? Nothing less than fierce persecution could be thus heralded.

For years Susannah had known Smith as a near neighbour, and the stuff of which the man was at this time made is indicated by the fact that instinctively she opened the window with noiseless haste.

Smith climbed in. "Has Halsey returned?"

The fire gave the only light in the room. Smith did not shut the window, but remained sitting on the sill. A bake-house at the back hid the place from neighbouring eyes.

"It's all up with our bank," said Smith.

"I feared so," said Susannah.

"The apostates took such a lot of money out of it. No bank anywhere in this region could have stood it. You have always been down on our management of the bank, Mrs. Halsey, but if it was not good, why then have so many of the Gentiles put in their money, and why have they taken our notes all over the State?"

"You never had the capital you advertised."

"We have land that stands for it."

"It is not worth half what you value it at."

Then Susannah became sorry for her sharp recrimination. Punishment had befallen; it was a time for mutual help, not for reproach. She saw that although Smith kept himself calm he was greatly stirred.

"Why are you here?" she asked.

Smith's huge frame was poised awkwardly on the window sill. He moved restlessly and touched one thing and another with nervous hands. Then he said with a short laugh, "The size of it is, I'm running away, Mrs. Halsey. Ye may think I feel pretty mean, but ye'll do me the justice just to think how it is. If they'd shoot me in fair fight, I'd go and, if it were the Lord's will, be shot to-morrow, and be thankful too; but ye know the sort of vengeance they'll take. I have been beaten time and again before now, and covered with pitch, and I've been knocked down and kicked and ducked in ponds a good many times, as ye know, and I ain't ashamed to say that I'm afraid of that sort of thing and afraid of the results on Emmar and the children. If the Lord clearly told that 'twas his will to stay and stand it, why then I'd have no choice, but I haven't had no word from the Lord."

His face was livid; in the effort to make his explanation, whether shaken by the recollections he described or by fear of her contempt, she saw that his limbs were actually trembling as if with cold.

"There ain't many men, Mrs. Halsey, as would stay and face that sort of music when they could get away, but if it was to do good to mortal creature I'd think about staying, but it's t'other way. It's me and Rigdon as has been advertised as working the bank; it's my blood and his the Gentiles that have our notes are thirsting for. Suppose we stayed and they took to mauling us again, wouldn't the Saints here take to fighting to protect us? I've taught them to fight in self-defence and they'd fight to defend me. God knows there are better men than we are that would be killed right and left if we stayed, and 'twould be no use, for the Gentile numbers would overpower us. 'Tain't no use. When I found to-day that there wasn't a chance of staving off the bankruptcy I sent Emmar and the children and Rigdon's folks off in a close waggon after sundown. Rigdon's rid off by another road, and I've got my horse ready and ought to be gone. And there ain't a man in Kirtland as will know which way we've gone by to-morrow, so that no Saint will need to do any lying on my account."